Museums take up evolution challenge (because "biology classes have faltered")

Chicago Tribune ^ | 16 Oct 05 | Lisa Anderson

[gobucks]

Natural history museums around the country are mounting new exhibits they hope will succeed where high school biology classes have faltered: convincing Americans that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a rigorously tested cornerstone of modern science.

Snip

"I think everyone is realizing that we need to be doing a great deal more. We just haven't made the effort to communicate evolution to people in terms they can understand. Evolution is exciting," Diamond said.

snip

"One of the big misunderstandings, I think, is that a lot of people have stopped realizing that science is a secular activity," said Lance Grande. Field's $17 million, 20,000-square foot, "Evolving Planet" exhibit is slated to open on March 10, 2006.

snip

"In many ways, I blame science itself in that we have done a terrible job of explaining what science is," said Leonard Krishtalka of ... Kansas in Lawrence.

"I would imagine to non-scientists a lot of science and technology sounds like so much magic," he said. "Is it any surprise that so many people are choosing one kind of magic over another kind of magic?"

In an effort to deepen visitors' understanding of evolution, the Field Museum has designed "Evolving Planet" to showcase dinosaurs without allowing them to overshadow everything else. In past evolution exhibits, McCarter said, people "whipped through the origin of life, and everything before the dinosaurs, to go look at the dinosaurs. And by the time they got done looking at the dinosaurs, they were so tired that they whipped out."

This time, he said, "we're using the dinosaurs as kind of the marquee to draw them in and saying, this is a very complicated story, which you've got to dig into over a long period of time."

[bondserv]

Did I say, "post-modernist?" I meant "hippie," of course. That @#%$!! establishment! Off the pigs! Peace! Love! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is gonna win! What if they gave a war and nobody came?

You will see a renewed vigor of scientific experimentation coming from conservative clear thinking people who are not comfortable calling assumptions science. The revolutionary movement is now in full swing.

The vast majority of the government funded Education Establishment is Liberal in their orientation. To deny this is utter foolishness.

Those who participate in the system become more Liberal by association and by learning to feed off of the government coffers. The leaders of the Hard Sciences within government funded organizations have been sliding hard to the left for a 100 years.

The Christians in our nation have disassociated themselves from the education establishment by not seeking positions amongst people of opposing values, and have trusted in the values and clear thinking they pass on to their children to counteract the "patched elbowed" revisionism.

The Liberals have pushed it to far recently, and we Christians are starting the push back to reality within the more objective Hard Sciences. We are perfectly aware of how little the Sciences understand our reality. The current uprising is the tip of the iceberg, for we have concertedly decided to take back the ground we formerly relinquished.

One only need to look at the firestorm in the public eye, both with massive exoduses to homeschooling, to the growing number of professionals publicly coming out of the ID/Creationist closet, to see the truth of my claims.

[Liberal Classic]

We are perfectly aware of how little the Sciences understand our reality.

Statements such as "the revolutionary movement is now in full swing" and "the current uprising is the tip of the iceberg" carry the bad odor of a historical dialectic. I think the problem is not how little the sciences understands about your reality, I think the problem is how little you understand of the sciences. There are untold numbers of people of faith working in scientific and engineering disciplines who do not take this adversarial stance of science being opposed to religion.

[Liberal Classic]

A literal reading of the Bible, on which "creation science" implicitly insists, misses the point of the Bible itself, which seems uninterested in literal interpretation. Like poetry and certain kinds of prose, which sometimes speak in metaphors and symbols, the Bible as a whole does not intend these stories to be taken literally. Literalism is not only misleading but is also a disservice to the cause of the Bible itself. It forces the Bible to compete as science, and in such a competition it cannot win. In a scientific age such as ours the Bible will never be accepted as science by educated people. What is more, attempting to secure acceptance for it as science is hardly worthwhile, for this would divert attention away from the Bible's religious message to details which from a religious point of view are trivial. The religious message is precisely the realm in which science cannot compete, and those devoted to the cause of the Bible would do far better service to their cause by stressing its unique religious message. To the religious person it makes little difference whether the world was created in six days or several billion years.

-- Jeffrey H. Tigay, Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures in the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania

[California Patriot]

The liberal establishment are masters of politicization. They will use any and all means to cram their teachings down the throats of the passive, inert public. This is just another example.

[Porterville]

Between lefty lunatics and those who close their minds to science, my kids are going to be rich fleecing the foolish of their cash... thank everyone for widdling down competition in the market place for my future children, and supplying the nation with a steady supply of future manual laborers to fix my kids plumbing and polyurethane caulking around the windows.

[VadeRetro]

You will see a renewed vigor of scientific experimentation coming from conservative clear thinking people who are not comfortable calling assumptions science. The revolutionary movement is now in full swing.

A breathtaking prediction for a thing nowhere in evidence. A research program for ID? Something besides quote-mining the existing literature? When I see it.

One only need to look at the firestorm in the public eye, both with massive exoduses to homeschooling, to the growing number of professionals publicly coming out of the ID/Creationist closet, to see the truth of my claims.

Flaps in school board meetings and courtrooms are not a research program. You did have me excited for one paragraph, though.

[Elsie]

Literalism is not only misleading but is also a disservice to the cause of the Bible itself.

The Devil is in the details.

Who does the 'choosing' of which are literal and which are not?

[guitarist]

If we descended from non-human animals, then, per se, there was at least once a baby that was a human being born to a mother that wasn't. ToE Falsified: game, set, match!

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"If we descended from non-human animals, then, per se, there was at least once a baby that was a human being born to a mother that wasn't. ToE Falsified: game, set, match!"

No, your understanding of evolution is just lacking. That is not how evolution works. Speciation happens with populations not with individuals. The changes that happen are gradual enough that any baby born within a given population will be very very close genetically to all of the members of that population. They will ALL still be the same species. What happens though is as that population (of say 10,000 individuals) is separated from the parent species (of say 1,000,000) the smaller population's allele frequency will shift away from the the original population. All of the members of the incipient species are genetically unique, but the range of their variation is far too small to make them separate species to one another.

We have examples of this in nature. Ring species are made up of 3 or more populations of nominally the same species. Population A can breed with population B; population B can breed with population C. Population A can't breed with population C though. The only way genetic material can pass between A and C is through B. If B goes extinct, then A and B are genetically isolated and become 2 species where before there was 1. And they are then free to diverge with no reference to the other. We have many examples of Ring Species in existing populations today. So no, you have not falsified the ToE, you have just made a very common error in describing it. Game, set, match, indeed.